Waterbury evening Democrat., 1887-12-09
FRIDAY, DECEMBER g, 1887.
BLA1NE,s BOLD BID.

We had, in our juvenility and innocence, SUI posed that European travel would tend to an expansion of thought-that inter course with new peoples would serve to re- move old prejudices, and that bigoted political policy professed here for pur- pose would yield to the enlightenment of the growth of ages abroad. Well, ,yes, we had thought that the plumed knight of Maine would, like Russell Lowell,
 believe in Freedoms name
 As far away as Paris is.
 And that in time he would come back to us with his great mind unencumbered by restricted notions of popular right and his acknowledged statesmanship liberated from partisan shackles. But no, the Ethiope's color is unchanged; and in the salons of the French capital he is just as intolerant of progress as when addressing his Repubi- can neighbors at Augusta or swinging round the circle in his campaign for the Presidency.
 When the first telegraphic summary of MT Blaine's criticism on President Cleve- lands message reached us, we confess to have entertained the idea that it was an enterprising invention of some needy French Reporter. We have high estimate of MT Blaine's qualities as a gentleman, and we could hardly believe that with the at tributes and instincts of the character he would precipitately descend to make bid for prospective dead mans shoes;' we be- ieve him to be a man of literary culture and refinement and hesitated credence to the want of delicacy involved in his re- ported pronouncement on the Presidents reform policy. We thought that having stood three years ago as the rival candidate to the great man who was selected as ruler of the United States-and, if all signs of the times indicate truly, is anxious to stand in the same relations again he would in the delicacy we have suggest ed, refrain from @ pronounced antago- nism and reserve his strictures for the time when, if he get the opportunity he should stand on the same broad platform of open rivalry. But then, nomination would be prerequisite to such an oppor- tunity; and he anticipates the opportunity by bold bid for the prerequisite.
 It is not our desire or design to follow the parripatetic MT Blaine through the in- tricacies of his political platitudes in reply to the President. The statements are of the old reckless standard, the arguments of the stamp that have sought to justify mon opoly, and uphold corruption and crush the people through all the years of Repub- lican misrule. MT Blaine in this attidude merely plays a part to subserve his own ambition, for he is too acute man not to know that America cannot remain in the old groove of party assumption while the Nations of the world step in on the march of progress. MT Blaine puts in an opposition to MT Cleveland's proposition. Not that he does not believe in their propriety, but that it is the only recommendation he now possesses to the favor of the cliques that would suffer by their enforcement. It is lamentable thing when a great intelli- gence will lower itself before selfish aspir- ations: when what should be an ardent patriotism yields to the miserable demands or party aScendancy. MT Dlalnes tlme for criticism was ill-chosen; his style un- warranted and unjust; the people of this country are keen enough in the aggregate to distinguish between the ruler who pro- notes reform and the would-be ruler who would cling e the oId aDu.~s. Ana-4ae Ma tion will estimate the object of Blaines Bold Bid. How the alliterative points come in The three Rs-Rum, Romanism and Rebellion-of a reverend advocate contributed in no small degree to the de- feat of 1884, and now the three little B's- Blaine's Bold Bid-win operate, if we mis- take not, against his nomination in Con- vention